First Ever Ice Wine in Brazil

Our friends at the METSUL reports that for the first time ever in Brazil icewine has been produced in this unusually cold June in Southern Brazil. This is a release on the Vinicolo Vineyard website. The following is a rough web based translation from Portuguese to English. The original Portuguese story is here.

With pleasure we inform that the Perico team yesterday registered in its vineyards, located in the farm Boy God, District of the Perico in Joaquin – Santa Catarina, a phenomenon of the nature, the most waited of this time: the ice wine. The temperatures had fallen well below-freezing and the thermometers had marked – 7.5 C. A dream if became reality: the harvest of the grapes congealed for this so wonderful act of the nature.

With this, the Vinicola Perico, will be first ever vineyard in Brazil to produce ICEWINE (Wine of the Ice), a natural licoroso wine, with raised amount of residual sugar of the proper grape.

The process of production of the Icewine, consists of mature grapes and extreme cold at-6 C, in this condition, the water that if find in the interior of the berries of the grapes congeal and the ice separates the rich juice in sugar. When the grapes are just right, they’re carefully picked by hand. Grapes in this condition have a very low yield – often an entire vine only makes a single bottle. That’s why ice wine can be so expensive and is often sold in half-bottles only … but it’s worth it! After this long harvest process, the grapes go through weeks of fermentation, followed by a few months of barrel aging in new barrels of French oak, Allier forest. The wine ends up a golden color, or a deep, rich amber. It has a very sweet (of course) taste. After vinificado we will have the pleasure to present this great BRAZILIAN only ICEWINE, which happens in Austria, Germany, north of Italy and Canada. See photos of our vineyard to the dawn, before and after the sun rose. More photos on home page.. More photos on home page.

We have posted stories on how this cold spring has caused agricultural problems in many locations worldwide. See this post . See David Archibald’s post originally on Icecap in which he forecasted these agricultural issues reposted with comments on Watts Up With That here. See Bloomberg post on spring wheat concerns in Canada due to a very cold May. See more on Spring in Canada here

Despite all these anecdotal evidences of global cooling, NOAA announced May 2009 was the 4th warmest in 130 years of record keeping (and manipulation) with an anomaly of +0.53C just a week after the University of Alabama using the NASA MSU satellite data assessed the global anomaly at just +0.043C, making it the 15th coldest in 31 years. Anthony and I will surely have more to say on this unlikely divergence soon.

I see that Ft. Meyers Florida is about the same latitude north as Santa Catarina, Brazil, is south latitude. Santa Catarina topography is not the same, of course, but it is only about 46 miles from the Atlantic Ocean. Wonder what the ocean currents are like off shore from Santa Catarina.

Amazing but just the southern hemisphere reflection of northern hemisphere Solar Minimum Climate (post on USA and Canada weather) and what happened in Napa Valley, California.
It is good to remember also that droughts are already present in the argentinian pampas (fields) where the main crops are wheat and soybean.
For the known argentinian geologist Miguel Gonzales, in his studies in the “Salinas del bebedero”, a salt lake in Argentina.http://www.springerlink.com/content/m11m129238u61484/all these weather changes coincide with solar minimums like the Maunder minimum , which produced drought in the argentinian “pampa” (plains), and which it is happening again now. So, in general, we have different weather systems: one west of the andes and the other east of the andes.
This will be a kind of proof of studies and forecasting because according to Gonzales, the “salinas del bebedero” (dried salt lakes) will fill again with water as has happened during the last minimums (Maunder, Sporer,etc)
In spanish: http://www.giurfa.com/salinas.pdf
We are witnessing the repetition of the same conditions.

They’ll soon drink the first ever ice wine in Brazil because it was the 4th hottest month (globally) on recorder per NOAA? Is that why frost has damaged crops througout Canada and in Northern US states? Or Chicago’s had a cold summer so far? I’m confused.
Then there’s June gloom in SoCal that has rarely let up this year.
The May NOAA measurement has nothing to do with all those Stevenson screens sitting next to air conditioners or on an expanse of asphalt does it?

Wow, lots of stories and news reports of abnormal cold and snowy June, while leaders of many governments were busy talking how to “fight global warming” through carbon emission cuts. They just finished their meeting in Bonn, Germany June 1-12, this week they are in Manila, Philippines for the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) “high level dialogue on climate change in Asia and the Pacific”. Science and politics really cannot mix!

Now that is making lemonade outa lemons. It’s like saying frozen apples are better. In reality the amber colored center makes the apple unmarketable as fresh fruit so it goes to juice instead. They just haven’t figured out how to sell icejuice at a higher price. Apple growers need to get in touch with the advertising agents selling icewine. Vineyards work there BUTTS off trying to keep the grapes from freezing on the vine. Why? Frozen grapes are sweeter but loose their bouquet as a grape. Icewine is very sweet and because of that, does not allow the flavor of the grapes to touch the tongue. It is a marketing ploy that works on the uninitiated.

The key to waking up the govermental leaders is to make them walk to thier limos and helicopters. They are not getting out into the real world. They can also start fighting Global Warming Hypnotica in their offices by opening the window and turning the Thermostat off.

This is interesting, while the Bermuda high has come earlier this year to warm the Eastern states it is currently a no-showhttp://www.accuweather.com/news-story.asp?partner=netweather&traveler=0&article=6
Also, we’re getting a variety of forecasts for tomorrow ranging from 103 from Intellicast to just 94 on Weather Underground. It’s a chance it’s just a guess as the high yesterday was 6 degrees above what was forecast.
Considering all the cold stories, UAH seems to agree (channel 5 showing temps. below the 20 year average)

rbateman (09:27:53) :
The key to waking up the govermental leaders is to make them walk to thier limos and helicopters. They are not getting out into the real world. They can also start fighting Global Warming Hypnotica in their offices by opening the window and turning the Thermostat off.
My guess is that they perfectly know about “global cooling” better than us, that is why they changed “global warming” to “climate change”. They don’t care about it, it’s plain business.
For the sophisticated, rich and smoked elites, it’s the New Age amusement to their boring lives, so they play the “green game”, daydream “A brave new world” and promote the breeding of rare spiders and mosquitoes….and all those unquotable and hence “snippable by the moderator” activities.
For the fool and the naive: It’s the end of the world!
For WUWT 15 million hits!!

Freak Beijing storm turns day into night
China correspondent Stephen McDonell and ABC cameraman Rob Hill saw day turn into night as a freak storm swept across the capital Beijing today.
“It was pitch black outside and you could see people looking out from the office towers across the road from us,” McDonell said…..
Cont….
The storms were expected to affect western and northern Xinjiang, most part of Inner Mongolia, north-east China and north China.
Today’s extreme weather follows yesterday’s hail storms across eastern China’s Anhui province, which killed 14 people and injured more than 180, AFP reports.
Anhui’s Civil Affairs Bureau said that more than 10,000 people were evacuated and nearly 9,700 houses collapsed in yesterday’s severe storm……
Cont….
A similar hail storm struck the region in the first week of June, killing 23 people and injuring more than 200.
Officials have warned residents that more dangerous weather could follow.

Dang ! I thought you said Rice Wine. I’m ready for some Sushi and Saki any time Anthony.
I once was witness to a half hour freak unseasonal hailstorm that wiped out my neighbor’s entire table grape crop for the year. Instead of a typical $23,000 annual income he made from selling those fine table grapes at a Santa Monica street fair; he got $700 from a brandy manufacturer for the few grapes he managed to save from the rot, with the help of some good neighbors.
In San Francisco Bay area; the local T&V weathermen simply said; “where did that come from”, and the natives slid their cars around on the street for a few minutes. For my neighbor it was another year of relying on their savings.
Ice wine no good; rice wine very good.

By the way, if you are a home wine maker, you can do the same thing. Freeze the grapes first (any grapes cuz it don’t matter). They’ll be much sweeter. Than extract juice. The wine will be sweet but tasteless. And yes, the extra sugar makes it a bit headier. Makes a better spicy mulled wine for xmas than it does a cold tasteless after dinner wine.

Reply to Pamela Gray…
I had my first ice wine or eiswein when I moved to Germany in 1998. I thought it was fantastic. It is a really good dessert wine. One thing about eiswein is that when it is young a lot of the bouquet and fruit flavors are overwhelmed by the syrupy sweetness that is a product of the way it is made. The juice of the grapes is concentrated by freezing the water out. The quality of ice wines in general is extremely variable. The quality of the grapes before they were frozen matters just as much as in a normal wine plus the time of the year the freeze occurs, how hard the freeze is and so on.
One of the most interesting things about ice wine is how it ages. If you can store it properly the wine changes over time more than any other wine I am familiar with, with the possible exception of Beerenauslece and and TrockenBeerenauslese wines. As the wine ages it becomes darker in color and looses almost all of its syrupy sweetness allowing the essence of the grape to reemerge.

Re: Don Shaw (11:55:50) :
I was aware of the storms in NJ and thought of mentioning them. Perhaps I should have.
In hindsight I probably should have posted the information in the The Thermostat Hypothesis thread since hail is a sign of strong updrafts. The surface winds of 104 MPH with the storm in China, to me, also indicates extreme vertical activity.

By the way, did you get the advertising gimmick of “natural” freezing somehow being better than jus’ stickin the fruit in the ol’ frig? A naturally frozen grape is far more dicey than freezing them in controlled environments. But it makes no difference how you do it. The freezer or the weather will result in the same process, the sugar coming out of the closet so to speak. It’s all in how you spin it and sell it isn’t it. Reminds me of another topic we occasionally talk about here. Yes?

Funny you should mention 100 MPH winds in China, just yesterday a neigboring county reported winds of over 80 MPH with a massive storm and hail in some areas up to 3 inches.
At least that sort of stuff is over for a while it seems, the rest of the week is supposed to be dry especially with the stationary front starting to move out.

I think I will buy a bottle. I will enjoy it while celebrating the naming of the Eddy Minimum . . . if I can safely store it long enough.
I’m guessing it’ll be pretty evident in 5 years and maybe named in 10 or 15.
On the other hand; At that point, a bottle of Brazillian Icewine might not seem that rare.

I have had some ice wine. You have to serve it cold and not room temperature. But it is very good. It is not bitter. More akin to grape juice. But it doesn’t have the additives of desert wines to get its sweet taste.

Frozen grapes need to be picked right away. You never leave grapes on the vine after a hard frost in hopes that somehow the vine canes will force more sugar into the grapes. And sugar production in the leaves is stopped “cold” so to speak. You cannot force more sugar from a frosted vine into a grape. You get what you get from the grape when the frost hits. You can’t even let the weather warm up first before you pick. If you do, fermentation sets in right away and destroys the entire thing. Besides, wasps and yellow jackets descend on the fermenting grapes and get VERY angry when someone comes along and calls “last round”. Which is why you never pick pears off the ground. Once there, they turn into bars and pubs for the locals. And the locals don’t take kindly to teetotalers drying up their town.

“Ice” any drink usually means more alcohol. Getting smashed doesn’t need anything as fancy as wine. Nor as expensive. “Late Harvest” is another matter totally. I have many bottles of mighty fine wine (both in season and late harvest) in my cellar. With no lock on the door as I would certainly lose it. (sorry, Pam)
Of course “natural” anything is better than man-made, and you can charge more for it. (other than climate change) I’m just a bigoted Yank, I guess, but I’ll match the best from the Left Coast with any wine in the world. Now, where did I leave the screwpull …

NOAA announced May 2009 was the 4th warmest in 130 years
With seeing the reports of cold from all over the world, both in the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere, this from the NOAA sends up a strong red flag.

Elizabeth (08:51:32) :
How does NOAA get away with such blatant misrepresentation?
How is the public so easily duped?
The average person can sense when a hand is being overplayed. People feel the cooler weather and see reports of cold from around the world and then if they see this from the NOAA they see overplay.
What I’m wondering is why the NOAA is so slow to see that the public will sense this overplay? So the real question is why has the NOAA been so easily duped?

I think I know where the NOAA gets its warm global temp from. They are using their predicted highs and lows. After all, they do say that they understand and explain weather. So why wait for the observed highs and lows?

I rather agree with Pamela that icewine is a marketing ploy to sell a fortune a not specially good wine with highly variable quality. The Brazilians would better have some experienced North Est (Alsace) French oenologists flewn to their vineyard to get something drinkable from their frosting grapes.
Here in Bordeaux, growers spend a fortune to prevent frost, either by installing burners or huge blowers or warm water sprayers. Some Grand Cru Classé in the Medoc or Saint Emilion even hire helicopters on exceptional circumstances to blow over their vines to save ward off frost. As an anecdote, season 2008 in the region has been catastrophic, with a production slashed by about 50%. Causes: too cold, to rainy, to many hailstorms. Climate change, you named it !

NOAA
VISION
An informed society that uses a comprehensive understanding of the role of the oceans, coasts, and atmosphere in the global ecosystem to make the best social and economic decisions
(The social and economic decisions of late seem less than brilliant)
MISSION
To understand and predict changes in Earth’s environment and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our Nation’s economic, social, and environmental needs
(Uhhhh, our economic, social and environmental needs are not really being understood)
NOAA CORE VALUES
People, Integrity, Excellence, Teamwork, and Ingenuity
Science, Service, and Stewardship
(Probably should concentrate more on the integrity part and less on the ingenuity part)
[snip]

On the question of being duped, there is some good background info.
The human systems are redundant in various ways. We have 2
eyes, but in each eye we also have 2 vision systems — color and
black&white.
The circadian clock in the brain is connected to, but not the same
as the one in the gut. The gut has its own nervous system (the
enteric system) which is not the same one as in the brain.
The brain itself has redundant systems. The important one in this
case is well illustrated by the dual memory systems. The fast-memory
systems and slow-memory systems are linked, but not the same.
Some people can be duped quickly. Some are not very susceptible
to fast dupe.
There are connections to language. Williams Syndrome and Einstein
Syndrome are opposite ends of the spectrum. Children with Williams
are wonderful fluent speakers and pick up language quickly. But
they cannot learn to add, multiply or tie shoes. Einstein did not speak
until he was 8 years old.
Certain people suck up faddish ideas and are duped quickly. They
speak well and convince like-minded people in government. But they
cannot reason, make things, fix things, or let go of an idea that is
disproved.

I found this comment from the BBC:
Ice wine in tropical Brasil – time to apologize
Ice wine harvest at -7.5°, climate change appears to be unstoppable.
We asked climate scientist Anthony Watts about his opinion.
BBC: “Mr. Watts, how do you weigh the importance of recent news about ice wine harvest in Brasil, isn’t it just as remarkable as Vinking agriculture in Greenland or the the opening of the North-West Passage ?”
Watts: “Well, using the well tempered language of peer reviewed climate science, I would say that the situation is much worse than expected. This is unprecedented and happening for the first time in human history”.
The IPCC also commented and it’s head scientist declared that things now happen exactly as predicted.
“Our computer models told us that climate change is imminent and changing the shape of the world as we know it.
While the rich in the developped world can easily move to their second homes in Tuscany and the Carribean, it will be the poor who suffer most.
These countries have to deal with massive population growth, have to develop nuclear weapons for security and now on top of that deal with altering shorelines and reduced harvests.”
Al Gore commented that “our policy was obviously right from the beginning. Now everybody can see that we need every additional Watt produced by solar and wind power. This will produce a lot of jobs in China and CO2 trading will create huge prosperity at Wallstreet.”
G. Schmidt at internet portal realclimate.com was not available for a comment, because his website was put into maintenance.
While James Hansen was also unavailable due to a snow storm at Sydney airport after witnessing in a criminal case against Austrailian climate activists,
Prof. Mann was able to comment.
During a road show for his private climate science software he declared:
“We are very proud to have been able to predict this. Our software is extremely robust and we always said, sign of temperature data doesn’t matter.
I think it is time for some self declared climate scientists and bloggers to apolgize.”

“WestHoustonGeo (15:50:55) :
Nah. Send ‘em each a hot 3.2 beer.”
Is that an ounce of beer, then ounce of milk, then ounce of beer, ounce of milk, beer, milk, beer, milk, and so on, until about 20 oz of each?
Please do not attempt that at home–or anywhere else.

“Einstein did not speak until he was 8 years old.”
An interesting bit of apocrypha…
The first words that Einstein spoke were, “The beans are too salty.” His mother, crying with joy, asked, why have you not spoken before?” Whereupon Einstein replied, “Up until now, everything was OK.”

Is this really that uncommon there? When I was last in Curitiba (North of Santa Catarina) I nearly froze to death because I thought I would not need anything more than jeans and a sweater for the worst of a Brazilian winter. Yeah, it can get cold in Brazil.

> Pamela Gray (12:35:53) :
> By the way, if you are a home wine maker, you can do the same
> thing. Freeze the grapes first (any grapes cuz it don’t matter).
> They’ll be much sweeter.
Canada’s ice wine industry has found itself in a similar situation to the French champagne industry. Somebody (probably an MBA) figured out that you could simply inject CO2 into wine, just like into soft drinks, and voila, instant Champagne at a fraction of the price. The vintners of the Champagne district lobbied hard and now only “naturally produced” champagne is allowed to be labelled as “champagne”. The term “sparkling wine” is used for the artificial stuff.
Similarly, “natural ice wine” producers are lobbyied to only allow the “naturally produced” stuff to be labelled as “ice wine”.

Could it be, that São Joaquim (at 1.353 m above sea level) and its districts is simply cold to begin with?

São Joaquim is a city in Santa Catarina, Brazil, southwest of the capital Florianópolis. The city is regarded as the coldest city in Brazil[3], with registered temperatures of -10°C. Snowfall may occur with a relatively high frequency.

@ Anthony:
Why you should not rely on automated translations
The English translations omits part of the original text and seriously distorts key parts.
I’ve looked at the original text and translated it with the aid of google language tools. Here are the first two paragraphs in my translation. The key parts are highlighted:

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
with pleasure we inform you, that the staff at Pericó yesterday reported from their vineyard, which is located at the plantation Menino Deus, District of Pericó in São Joaquim – SC, a phenomenon of nature, as expected for this season: the frost. Temperatures dropped well below zero and thermometers marked – 7.5 º C. A dream became reality: the harvest of grapes frozen by this wonderful act of nature, at 1300 meters above sea level.
With this, the Winery Peric, will be the 1st of Brazil to develop the ICEWINE(sic) (Vinho do Gelo (sic)), a natural wine with a high amount of residual sugar in the grape.

Even if you do not trust my translation, the second paragraph clearly shows, that icewine is “Vinho do Gelo”, while in the first paragraph the phenomenon is “gelo”, i.e. “frost”.
To summarize:
– The first “ice wine” in the Joe D’Aleo translation should read “frost”!
– The frost is expected in this location, not a surprise!
– The vineyard is at 1300 m above sea level. Looks like D’Aleo didn’t bother to check why his translation dropped the phrase containing “1300”.
The Brazilian icewine is not “anecdotal evidences of global cooling”. An update of the original post is in order, IMHO.

The city of Sao Joaquim, the coldest in Brazil, is experiencing its coldest month of June since 1963. I said 1963 !!!! Frost and icing is not uncommon in this particular area of Brazil, but the sustained cold in this month is anything but usual. And forecast models are already indicating an impressive cold snap in South America for the last week of the month, what will probably garantee the coldes June in the region in the last 46 years. By the way, GELO is ICE and GEADA is frost in Portuguese.Reply: Eu estava esperando que alguém do Brasil iria comentar. ~ charles the moderator

The frost was predicted by the weather guy. And let’s call it a freeze, not a frost. It was simply a predicted event that caused the vineyard to prepare to harvest for icewine. It does NOT happen every year. Most vineyards handle frosts with mechanized systems that turn on when the temp drops below a certain level. Frosts can be handled. Freezes not so much. So you produce icewine. You can’t harvest before the predicted freeze because there is not enough sugar in the grape to produce anything other than vinegar. So if a freeze is predicted, everything is geared up for icewine.
The latest congressional report out Tuesday is scary in that it predicts continued warming and should be used for agricultural planning, among other things. WRONG! If cooling continues, those that depended on this predicted warming will be producing either vinegar or icewine in the northern hemisphere vineyards at the 45th parallel and higher. And will lose their collective shirts. They should be hedging their bets by taking some of those vineyards out of production and planting freeze hardy crops.
The GWA’s and the tax and cap scheme will harm the food industry more than all the religious jihad idiots could with one dirty bomb. We will have just out of college gullible farmers planting warm weather crops that will freeze kill before harvest. Our own political leaders are sending us to hell in a handbasket (with no food in it either) with the pending CO2 reduction bill. Let’s hope the Senate has some sense knocked into it. Gawd, I hate being a registered Democrat.

Bluegrue
In defense of D’Aleo, the press release announces that it was the first production of ICEWINE ever in Brazil. So, the information posted at ICECAP is correct and according to the content ofn the release. ICECAP also mentions that is a unuasually cold June in the regional. After the month’s end there will be a report on D’Aleo’s website on the records and milestones of this very cold June down here in this part of South America.

Alexandre Aguiar
On the other hand please keep the nature of icewine in mind. Icewine is not a simple product to create. Apart from a market demand you’d need quite a bit of planning, as I will point out in the following paragraph. I consider this to be a more likely scenario than an emergency solution due to bad weather.
The first icewine was the result of a very bad winter which virtually destroyed the harvest. Only when cutting the grapes as cattle feed did the vintner find out about the high sugar content of the remaining grapes and pulled it off. If you want to produce icewine today, you will select the varietal with the final product in mind and choose mostly Vidal Blanc, Chenin Blanc and Riesling. Growing icewine is an all-or-nothing gamble, where you need good weather in autumn and freeze at the proper timing. Due to ill weather and necessary cutting out of grapes, which have become ripe too early, you will only get about 10% of the wine you would get in a traditional harvest. You’re well advised to have stronger than usual presses at the ready, as the grapes need to be processed while still being frozen and you would get even less icewine otherwise.
That said, it takes either bad weather (when life hands you lemons, make lemonade) or a lot of planning (including quite a bit of confidence, that the freeze will come in time) to make icewine. It would be interesting to find out which of the above happened here, my guess is the planned scenario. As you are speaking Portuguese, you could e-mail the vineyard and simply ask.

[i]On the other hand please keep the nature of icewine in mind. Icewine is not a simple product to create. Apart from a market demand you’d need quite a bit of planning, as I will point out in the following paragraph. I consider this to be a more likely scenario than an emergency solution due to bad weather.[/i]
bluegrue (10:01:37) :
[i][In order to produce an Icewine, the grapes must be frozen in vineyards still pressed frozen. Thus, the ice is trapped inside the shell, along with seeds and juice is very rich in sugars.
Indeed, we collect only 45% of the grapes, because before the sun rises stopped the harvest. The rest of the grapes were left in the Vineyard.
,,,,,,, including the process of pressing of grapes where you can see that the must was-3C and the ice was inside the shells. For that you must like the idea of it was concentrated, we 338g / L sugar (potential alcohol of 20 %!!!!!!!) My idea is to ferment up to 13% and leave a residual sugar of between 110 and 120g / L .
A hug
Eng Agr. Jefferson Sancineto Nunes “[/i]
Maybe not the best Icewine in the world.
but: is icewine.
Brahmas many Brahmas

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